Next book + new coffee spot. Quiet Saturdays for whirlwind weeks.
Thought I’d track my reading list this year. I did it once in college and enjoyed looking back at what I’d read, so thought I’d give it another go to try to bring back regularly reading.
1. redbreast by Jo Nesbø. This took about 150 pages to get into, but once the foundation is set it reads like a cold war spy novel. Avoiding pulp style, though, I can see why Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy has been compared to Nesbø’s own Harry Hole series - of which this is the second book, first in English. This is an articulate, detailed, complicated story. I’m constantly trying to decide how I feel about anti-heroes and I think it’s very easy to go over the top, making the hero not only unsympathetic but a caricature. I’m still not sold on Hole as the protagonist detective, but I like him enough - or at least Nesbø’s plots enough - to have bought the next book in the series minutes after I finished this one.
2. Sisterhood Everlasting by Ann Brashares. I discovered Tibby, Lena, Bridget, and Carmen in college and devoured the first three books. At that time, this was just set to be a trilogy (I think). When the fourth book was announced I pre-ordered it and read it in a day. I don’t think I need to go into the story of the Sisterhood, but I will say that I did not expect what Sisterhood Everlasting turned out to be. The story definitely reflected a more adult audience and characters, while the style was familiar and comforting. I’d recommend this to fans of the series, but it wouldn’t be good as an introduction.
3. MWF Seeking BFF by Rachel Bertsche. I spent an entire weekend quoting and referencing this book, while in the same breath saying “Actually, it’s kind of a stupid book…”. And that pretty much sums up my relationship: everything in here is pretty valid, but the way it’s presented makes it feel very awkward to me. It’s not that I didn’t like Bertsche’s voice, I did. It just felt like she was trying to straddle memoir with sociological exploration and in the process did a disservice to both. While the accounts of her friend dates were entertaining, I found her very repetitive as she kept re-discovering how true different theories were or kept repeating different research theses. I can see that the content of her friend dates wasn’t enough to really sustain a book and that the research portion wasn’t enough to sustain a book. I don’t doubt that that’s more because of the audience Bertsche was trying to find, rather than the amount of available research or Bertsche’s thoroughness. To include more research would have made the book less accessible. I think what I would have liked is for this book to be written two or three years after the events it talks about so that we could also see how many of the promising friendships lasted and in what ways they evolved. Like Bertsche describes toward the end of her year, it just started to feel like a race to finish instead of actually having the time and ability to explore each relationship worth exploring.
Also: the gendering in this book was really horrible. So. Much. Essentializing. I lost count how many times Bertsche talked about “how men make friends and why” vs. “how women make friends and why”. For example, that men make friends through parallel activity and don’t need someone to vent to or to share secrets with or to analyze important issues with. That a man’s wife is that person and no one else is needed. Conversely, that women make friends specifically to do these things rather than rely on their husbands. I don’t even take issue with the credibility of her research to support this. I take issue with how often it was mentioned without any kind of examination. It got to the point where I felt like she was trying to re-assure herself about why she had set out to make new friends. She also uses “she” and “her” whenever talking about the reader - never a neutral “them” or “they” or even switching between “he” and “she”. Which completely alienated me as a male-identified gender-queer reader. Finally, she did make one gay male friend - but when describing this person, he’s described in pretty tokenizing language. She talks about why women love to have gay friends, why their boyfriends/husbands like women to have gay friends, and so on. The result is that the book is condescendingly heteronormative for a book about friendship rather than romantic relationships.
Given all of that, you’d think I would have hated it. Instead I enjoyed it, read it quickly, and like I said - found a lot I could relate to when it comes to how I’ve experienced friendships. Both male and female friendships.
4. Cheerful Money by Tad Friend. This is another book that I’m not sure should have been a book. Or should have been this book. I knew a family history would be confusing at least in the beginning, but this book confused me for the full 336 pages. Mostly because it jumps around in time, uses both first names and nicknames, and will return to characters only mentioned briefly a handful of chapters ago - without any context that I could see about who these people were. I finally just had to go with it and not focus on who the story was about, instead getting to the point Friend was trying to make. Which was the second issue: I wasn’t entirely sure what Friend’s point was. The book pretty much read to me like a slightly organized stream of consciousness, therapy session - exploring why Friend became the man he is today. Which he admits to - that’s part of why he wrote the book. I picked it up because I’m fascinated by Wasps and their cultural impact/heritage - more the moneyed part than the white, Anglo-saxon, protestant part - though the former follows the latter. Just like how MWF Seeking BFF tried to straddle memoir and sociological examination, Cheerful Money tends to straddle memoir and historical excavation. And again - suffers for the lack of focus and clarity.
To top it off, Friend’s voice came off as at the same time self-deprecating and boastful. Almost as if to brag at how self-aware he is, and therefore since he knows he is neurotic and brusque, what more is there to do about it? That wall does come down in the end though as he reveals some of the more vulnerable moments with his parents and wife, the same moments he’s been trying to have his whole life with his family.
